


Announcing Your Place in the World of Things

by Marivan



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Soulmate geese
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:02:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29630199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marivan/pseuds/Marivan
Summary: On a spring day in 1994, Nile Freeman is born to a loving family and a Canada goose honking at the hospital window. On the same day, Sebastien Le Livre wakes to find a sandy-white egg lying on the pillow next to him.Or, a soulmate goose AU
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman
Comments: 78
Kudos: 89





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> So someone tumblr was like "what if there was soulmate AU where people who have a soulmate have a goose companion to help them find their soulmate" and then the Book of Nile group chat had a field day with it and then I was like "yep that idea is just wacky enough that I am absolutely writing Old Guard fic with it." _ta-da!_
> 
> Many thanks to Winterequinoxxx and energievie and the BoN group chat for the idea and some of the details that have been pulled into this fic.
> 
> Much love to the friends at Disaster Immortals for the cheering and encouragement.
> 
> Title is from the poem _Wild Geese_ by Mary Oliver.

On a spring day in 1994, Nile Freeman was born to a loving family and a Canada goose honking at the hospital window. On the same day, Sebastien Le Livre woke to find a sandy-white egg lying on the pillow next to him.

A month later, Booker returns to his room at night to find a crack in the egg on his pillow. Panic rises in his throat and he crouches down so his face is level with the egg. He holds his breath, hoping, hoping, until a small black beak pokes through the smooth white and then a small grey head, with soft dark eyes, emerges and looks at him like he is everything. The fluffy feathers, webbed feet. A gosling. _Merde._

Booker curls up against the side of his bed, with his head between his knees. Amelie -- he knows instinctually the gosling’s name is Amelie -- settles in the crook of his arm and lays her face against his cheek. It is too much. It is all too much. He hears Amelie make a squeak, something that in a year or two will turn into a full on honk, and the tears begin to fall.

Sometime later there’s a soft “ _fratello_?” at the doorway and then Nicky is at his side, a hand rubbing comfort into the back of Booker’s neck.

“It-- This-- is a good thing,” Nicky says, gesturing at the gosling clutched against Booker’s chest. “A future with love. Hope.”

“And then I will lose them. Just like--” He shakes his head, willing the memories, the pain to fly from where they’ve settled against his brain. “What about the hundred, the thousands of years I will have to endure after my _soulmate_ is gone?”

“You do not know that--”

“Nicky.” Tight. A warning. “Don’t.”

They sit there in silence. Neither has anything else to say.

Booker knows he should feel happy. Getting a goose -- and with it the promise of a soul match -- is a blessing few receive.

But he has watched everyone he has ever loved -- his wife, his sons -- grow old and die. Now he will watch his soulmate, whomever they are, do the same.

All he can fathom for his future is sorrow.

At some point, Nicky leaves. At some point, the tears begin to fall down his face once more.

Amelie nips at his chin and he tilts his head down to look at her.

“Hey,” he says, softly, as if to a small child. And then, perhaps the only good thing that’s come of this, “At least now we have each other.”

Amelie’s feathers are still fuzz, but she does her best attempt at preening. When she is older it will have the intended effect, showing off, showing her worth, but right now he finds it hopelessly endearing. He can’t help but laugh.

Amelie follows Booker everywhere, constantly underfoot, but with an uncanny ability to never be stepped on. She sits on Booker’s shoulder, curls up in his lap when he’s sitting. For the first few months of Amelie’s life, they are never further than a few feet apart.

Maryam and Margherita, Joe and Nicky’s swans, investigate the new one, lower their long necks and sniff at her, trail after her, call to her. Amelie ignores their attentions. She stays to Booker’s side, rarely makes a sound. Eventually they return the favor, paying her no particular mind.

One afternoon, Booker lays on the couch with Amelie nestled against his neck and reads aloud to her. She nibbles at his hair and eventually curls up and falls asleep. Her gosling fluff tickles at his skin as she breathes and he smiles around the words as he speaks them. It isn’t exactly like reading to his sons when they were little, but it does feel nice.

Later that evening, Joe slings an arm around his shoulder and says, “It’s good to see you happy, _mon frere_.” At Joe’s side, Maryam honks, apparently in agreement.

From the other side of the room, Andy snorts. “It’s almost like that bird is his soulmate, not just the indication of one.”

Both Booker and Joe turn to stare at her. Booker’s mind races. _How dare she--_

“Stop it,” Joe bites out, crossing the room in an instant and pulling the Vodka bottle from her fingers. “You have no right.”

“You and Nicky don’t know what it’s like to be abandoned.”

Booker realizes Amelie is not underfoot. He scans the room and doesn’t see her anywhere. As he hears Andy rage about how Hector and Quan left her after she gave up looking for Quynh, he turns and flees to his bedroom, heart clenched, that Amelie, too, is gone. That he fucked this up, just like everything else.

Instead, there she is on his bed, small and oblong, with her beak tucked under her wing.

“It’s okay,” he says, reaching for her. He lays down on his side and pulls her close, his body curled around hers.

And he sobs. Because it’s not okay. Because Andy is hurting and Joe and Nicky don’t know what to do and his soulmate is out there somewhere, so young and so mortal, and the only person in the entire world who understands even a fraction of this is the quiet little gosling, always at his side.

Amelie sheds her fluff for feathers and the others decide it time to get back out in the field. Leaving their geese is standard operating procedure. Maryam and Margherita are huge and white and noisy as all hell when Joe and Nicky are in danger. Nicky loves telling the story of the time Maryam bit a pickpocket in the ass in the old markets of Al-Qahira. Joe’s favorite story about Margherita is the time she laid with Nicky in a sniper’s nest only to start squawking as the target pulled a gun -- on someone else, not even Nicky -- causing him to startle and miss his shot.

Booker resists. Amelie is little still, less than a year. He claims that they don’t get what it’s like. None of them have ever raised children. Margherita and Maryam came to Joe and Nicky as adults when they were each 10 years old. It’s been literally thousands of years since Andy raised Hector from his gosling-hood. Amelie puts up with the rest of them sure, but she doesn’t seem to especially _like_ anyone but Booker. It’s not that he doesn’t trust them… but he doesn’t trust them. Maybe in time he will take Amelie’s presence for granted, will get annoyed with her protectiveness, chaffed by her constancy. But not yet.

They eventually wear him down. Joe finds a mission that involves rescuing children; Nicky says they can do some good in the world.

Booker bends down to say goodbye, stroking the grey feathers across Amelie’s back. “I’ll be back, I promise,” he whispers and she presses her forehead against his cheek in understanding.

Joe and Nicky leave Maryam and Margherita with strict instructions to not let Amelie out of their sight.

Booker’s last glance at them over his shoulder shows the two swans bracketing his goose, keeping her from running after him with the occasional small nip.

Nicky was right -- they did do some good. But the highlight of the mission for Booker was returning to the safe house to see Margherita and Maryam nudging at Amelie’s tail. After just a moment’s hesitation, she flapped her wings, took a couple of steps forward and launched herself into his arms.

Her first flight. Amelie lets loose a rare honk in delight. He couldn’t be prouder.

Over the next few years, Amelie grows into a beautiful Greylag, deep grey feathers tipped with white, beak and feet colored bright orange, eyes that can pierce the soul.

She still tries to perch on his shoulder and Booker allows it, even though she is much too big to really fit -- he has to crane his neck to the side. With the exception of missions, Amelie is always with him. When he shops for supplies or drives into town, when it’s his turn to cook dinner, when he sits at his computer or lies down to read. She is there, always, a head on his thigh or his shoulder, cuddled in his lap.

Most of the time, when he’s out in public, nobody pays him or Amelie any mind. Soulmate geese are rare but they’re not that rare. Sometimes, older men and women will come up to him and ask if he’s found his match yet. “No, not yet,” he says. They admire Amelie, wish him the best. Occasionally, he’ll see someone with a soulmate goose of their own. He always stops and wonders, _Is that them?_ even if he knows the math isn’t right, that his soulmate is probably still just a child. But Amelie never seems to notice, always stays snug at his side. _Not yet, then._

Booker feels bereft when Amelie isn’t there. Andy calls him “overly attached.” Joe and Nicky try to spare him from the worst of her rage. Their sister, their friend is hurting and Booker might be the spark of that pain but he is not the cause.

Even with Amelie, though, some days it’s still too much. To see Joe and Nicky and Maryam and Margherita perfectly content in each other’s company, their easy touches and soft kisses. To know that this is in his future, but also that he will see the end of his soulmate relationship, the return to grief and loneliness once again. On these days, he shuts himself away and turns to the whiskey. Amelie always looks affronted, huffs and turns her back on him. It always hurts a little, at first, and then there’s enough alcohol in his system that he can’t bring himself to care.

He’s got years still till his soulmate will be old enough to be with him. Some days he can’t wait for that day to come, when Amelie sees something in another’s goose, when sparks will fly between him and his soulmate and all will be right with the world. Other days he wishes for the whole thing to be over, a relationship consummated and carried out in the blink of an eye so he can return to the depressing normal of his existence, to whatever this is.

Nile doesn’t remember the day of her birth, but to hear her mother tell it, well, it sounds like quite the experience.

Nile’s mother always began the story with the preface, “Labor is called labor for a reason. It is hard work.”

So when the doctor is telling her to “Push. Push. Just a little bit more,” and her husband is squeezing her hand more than she is squeezing his and then there’s a release in the pressure down there, Nile’s mother’s only thought was “I did it,” before the delivery room descended into absolute and utter chaos. There’s a cheer from her husband and kisses raining down across her face and a screaming baby being whisked off by a nurse and a goose honking and throwing itself against the glass of the delivery room window.

Wait, a goose? Everyone in the room seems to have this thought at the same moment and freeze. This baby doesn’t even have a name and it already has a goose. Soulmate geese are rare, but this? One of the labor and delivery nurses remembers the footnote from their training, that if a goose shows up right after delivery, they’re supposed to let it in. She goes to the window, but can’t figure out how to open it. “I’ll call facilities,” she mumbles.

Eventually the window is opened and the goose finally quiets and jumps inside. Nile’s mother remembers holding her baby for the first time and this enormous Canada goose hopping up onto the bed and settling down right next to her arms, nosing at her little baby’s face. She remembers thinking that this isn’t at all what she expected, but she can get used to having a goose butting into her business if it means her baby girl is someday going to be loved and cherished beyond measure and reason.

For years, he is called “Nile’s goose,” or just “goose.” Despite his dramatic and noisy entrance into their lives, Nile’s parents learn he’s actually pretty quiet. He keeps a sharp eye on Nile at all times, but permits her parent’s care and affection for her. When they bring Nile’s younger brother home four years later, Nile’s goose circles him and sniffs at him and honks once and then largely ignores that there’s another human living in his house.

The earliest memory Nile has is from her first day of Kindergarten. She remembers walking into her new school and her new classroom with her fingers clutching at her goose’s feathers. Her teacher, whose name Nile can’t now remember, crouched down and introduced herself and asked Nile’s name. Her teacher gave her a high five and then asked, “And what’s your goose’s name?”

And Nile said the first thing that came to mind, but it felt _right_. “Tigris.”

She remembers the woman’s eyes widening at recognition, a recognition that Nile wouldn’t understand until their 6th grade social studies unit on Ancient Mesopotamia.

She also learns that no matter where she is or what she’s doing, she can count on Tigris to protect her.

The first time she remembers it happening is on the playground in 3rd or 4th grade. She’s playing soccer with the boys because the girls in her class have decided to play weddings and Tigris is always annoying when they play weddings because he huffs and nips and throws a small fit whenever it’s her turn to be the bride or groom and being a guest or the flower girl gets boring after a while. So she’s playing soccer and she’s playing forward. One of her teammates is dribbling up the field and she runs around the defender to the far post and shouts and the ball comes soaring her way and then it's at her feet and she kicks it and it flies high over the crossbar. She sighs and shrugs and starts running back to midfield, when she hears the goalie on the other team say, “why’d you let a girl play for you if she’s just going to choke?”

And suddenly the boy has a face full of feathers and a honking, hissing Tigris biting at him and making him regret ever saying anything.

“Nile, get your goose awayyy,” he whines and bats at Tigris which only makes the goose angrier. One of the teachers comes running over and instructs Nile to call off her goose.

“Tigris,” she says, “Stop it.” He does, looks at her for a moment, but then turns back to the boy and continues hissing. Nile looks at her teacher and then back at her goose. “At least the biting stopped?” she mumbles.

One of the other boys, one of the boys on Nile’s team says, “Maybe you should apologize for the mean thing you said to Nile.”

The goalie looks at Tigris and looks at Nile and gulps and says, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” the teacher prompts.

“I’m sorry for saying that you shouldn’t play with us because you’re a girl.”

Nile says, “Apology accepted.” Tigris stops immediately and waddles over to her side. He pushes his head into her hand and she scratches underneath his chin, a small token of her appreciation.

Nobody messes with Nile after that. Not in elementary school, not in middle school.

High school, though, gets complicated.

By this point, there are a handful of other people at school who have geese. Tigris doesn’t seem interested in any of them.

Nile goes through a phase where she watches every movie and reads every novel about people with geese finding their soul’s match. Almost always the character and their geese are inseparable, constantly in each other’s space. Nile and Tigris aren’t like that, aren’t especially physically affectionate. He’s always around, of course, but he doesn’t stay constantly at her side. Eventually Nile grows irritated with how unrealistic soulmates stories are. Whatever. Nile and Tigris have always been a little different anyways. Most people don’t get their goose till they hit puberty, if they ever get one at all. Tigris has always been a constant in Nile’s life, there from her earliest memories. She knows he’s not going anywhere.

In 10th grade, Nile develops this huge crush on a guy in her math class. He’s kinda nerdy, but she’s down with that, and when he grins, he has just the cutest smile. Nile tries to talk to him before or after class, asking him about a problem from the homework or what his plans are for the weekend. Whenever she does, she senses Tigris getting huffy, his feathers ruffling. Nothing outright hostile, but Tigris definitely doesn’t like this guy and Nile doesn’t get it because he’s just a cute nerd. It’s not like when boys would tease her for being sporty in elementary school or that time when some girls made fun of her braids in middle school.

Eventually Nile gives up trying to flirt with him. He’s not interested, either because she has a soulmate goose and he doesn’t, which -- ugh -- is pretty quickly becoming a theme in her attempts at dating, or because he’s actually not interested. Whatever. She moves on.

A year later it comes out that the guy from math class was hooking up with three different girls in their grade, and promising each he was exclusive with them, but not ready to take their relationship public.

In addition to his protective streak, Tigris is apparently a better judge of character than she is.

Nile gets a part-time job as a cashier at the supermarket. Usually she can pick out the pain in the ass customers when they're loading their groceries onto the conveyor belt, but sometimes Tigris will nudge his beak into her thigh and she puts on her best customer service smile and braces herself for whatever shitstorm’s about to rain down on her.

Nile graduates from high school and goes full time at the supermarket. She saves a little money, goes to gay bars some weekends just to see if Tigris notices anybody. He doesn’t.

She wants to go to college. She wants to see the world outside of Chicago. She wants to find her soulmate. All of those things seem impossible, so she does the only thing she can think of: she enlists.

When Nile leaves for basic, she kisses her mom and her brother goodbye and then sits down and Tigris comes to sit in her lap. She wraps her arms around him and sobs. She doesn’t know how to live without him and she’ll miss his snuffling and rustling and flapping that have been the constant background noise of her life.

But he’s her goose, so he understands the choices she’s making. He nudges his forehead against her cheek and she untangles herself from around him. “See you soon, yeah?” He bobs his head and with that little token of his confidence, she thinks she might actually be able to do this.


	2. The Middle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Note: In the first section of this chapter, Booker considers the possibly of medically assisted suicide, similar to in the film.
> 
> ALSO ALSO ALSO rinle has made _stunning_ art of Nile and Tigris and Booker and Amelie. [Go take a look](https://rinledraws.tumblr.com/post/644146060108939264) and shower them with all of the gratitude for this amazing gift!!

Booker’s not really sure why he takes that first meeting with Copley. He’d been kicking around London and maybe a little bit bored. He’d been curious. And yeah _they don’t do repeats_ but what could be the harm in a meeting and hearing him out?

Booker sees the board with all of their faces across the years. Amelie stands next to him looking at it too with her head slightly cocked, like she is really digesting the length and scope of his life. It’s a bit unnerving to see his life depicted in this extremely episodic way, but he’s gotta admire Copley’s dedication to his research. Finding the photos, especially, couldn’t have been easy.

Booker also notices the big, empty house. Modern, minimalist, impersonal. And it’s odd, to have his life splashed all over these walls but to see almost no personal details from the man who actually lives here.

He hears Copley’s appeal -- help be the ending of disease, of suffering -- and he can tell there’s _something_ the man’s holding back, some reason he would go to all this length he hasn’t revealed. That’s how it goes with spooks, or ex-spooks. Booker bounces around the sitting area, processing what he’s heard and what things unspoken might be lying in between what was said. He spots the two framed photographs on Copley’s desk. One is the photo of the four of them in the American Civil War. The man is obsessed, truly. The other, though, is of Copley sitting in the grass with his arm around a woman and two geese, a little white Snow Goose and a Greylag like Amelie, resting against each other, too.

Booker looks up at Copley, realizes he hasn’t seen a goose nor any sign of one since he’s been here. And then it hits him. She’s dead. Copley’s soulmate is dead, his goose gone along with hers, forever. Booker sees the bags under his eyes, the man’s strained expression with new understanding.

“Your soulmate,” says Booker, pointing to the frame, “how long ago?”

“Two years. ALS.”

“Watching our loved ones die is the hardest thing a person can do.” He sees Copley’s look at Amelie, the longing there and adds in his head, _and none of them were my soulmate._

He realizes that if science can figure out how they keep living, maybe it can discover a way to end it. Not now, but for whenever his soulmate dies. So he does not have to live, like Copley, hallow without his other half. So he does not have to live, unlike Copley, for an almost infinite amount of time without them.

That night he gets back to the flat he’s renting and hugs Amelie close. It’s been almost 26 years since she cracked through the shell of her egg and came into his life. His soulmate will always be painfully young in comparison to him, but at least, now, wherever they are, they are an adult.

He tries not to imagine his soulmate. He always ends up picturing someone with the dark hair and fair skin of his first wife. Tonight, though, his mind spins through possibilities, tall or short, pale or dark, broad and angular or soft and curved. Would they be college educated or work with their hands? Would they be ashamed of their baby photos or delighted to show him? Would they be French or from any other place in the wide, vast world?

Amelie starts nipping at his face. “Okay, okay,” he says and gets up to put the kettle on for tea. It is pointless imagining. They will meet when they are meant to meet. He’s waited this long. He can wait a little bit longer.

Booker’s riding in an empty box car on his way back to Morocco, alone, when he first sees her, feels her in his dreams. The slash of the knife at her throat, so similar and so different than his own first death. The bit of a name tag. The buzz of the helicopter.

He wakes with a surge of hope -- _maybe_ \-- and then realizes there was no goose at her side, no goose in his dreams.

The others will have to deal with it. He’s on his way to pick up Amelie and Maryam and Margherita, before meeting up with the others in France. Still, more than a quarter century later, he hates being parted from his goose.

As has become her ritual, Nile’s mother opens the back door after dinner and calls, “Tigris.” Usually the big black and brown bird comes swooping over and prances into her apartment like he owns it and has never left. Then, he pads down the hallway and settles amongst the nest of clothes and blankets he’s made for himself on Nile’s bed.

Tonight, though there is nothing. No soft beating of wings or rustle of feathers. No silhouette against the sky. She calls again. Still nothing.

 _No no no no no no no._ Tigris is gone. Nile’s mother sinks to the floor and sobs. Her baby girl is gone. And she never even got the chance to meet her soulmate.

The marines in dress uniform on her doorstep a week later just confirm what she already knows.

Booker pulls up to the Charlie safehouse in Goussainville and immediately senses that something is off. Amelie nudges her face into his side. Maryam and Margherita start squawking, loudly and painfully. Booker pulls the gun from the waistband of his pants. “Stay here,” he says to the birds and locks the car to make sure of it.

He sees the bodies on the ground first, grunts in tactical gear. He nears the door to the rectory, raises his gun.

“Andy?” he calls. “Nicky? Joe?” He turns into the doorway and there’s a woman, tall, dark and sharp eyed, with a gun pointed at him. The new one.

He spies Andy over her shoulder, pushing clothes into a duffle. Andy glances up at him.

“Took you fucking long enough. Nile, meet Booker.” Andy tosses the introduction out as she hoists the duffle on one shoulder and pulls her labrys onto the other. “Booker, Nile.”

The woman lowers her gun. Booker clicks the safety over on his and stashes it back in his waistband.

“What’s going on?” he says.

“Car?”

“Out front.”

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

He follows Andy and the new one -- Nile -- out of the building.

Nile was certain her life couldn’t get any stranger. Then she gets in a car with two people, a goose, and two very unhappy swans. She had seen all of them in her dreams, but the reality is overwhelming. Now, there are an equal number of geese and people in this old sedan with cracking leather seats. Nile gets stuck in the back with the swans who nose at her and honk, loudly and repeatedly, till Andy shouts, “LADIES, we’re going to get them back” from the front passenger seat. They quiet immediately.

As Booker pulls away from the church, his goose attempts to settle on his shoulder. “Not now,” he growls at her. She nips at his hair affectionately and then hops down onto the backseat between Nile and the swans. She noses at Nile and then pushes the top of her head into Nile’s hand. Nile freezes, stunned. She has never, ever touched someone else’s goose. It just isn’t done. And here Booker’s goose is practically begging for head scratches. The goose butts her head into Nile’s thigh and then her hand again. Nile relents and rubs at her head. Booker’s Greylag rustles her wings happily and then lays her head on top of Nile’s leg. The swans are still pacing in circles and calling softly in the seat next to her, but Booker’s goose seems to have tuned them out, content with Nile’s soft scritches.

Once out on the highway, Andy begins her explanations, filling in the missing pieces for the both of them. The team got set up on their last mission. Joe and Nicky were working on trying to find Copley, their contact, ex-CIA, but hadn’t made any progress. The people who set them up are almost certainly the same people who’ve taken Joe and Nicky. Currently, they’re headed to a safe place to hide and regroup and figure out how to get them back.

The wheels of the car spin through the darkness of the French countryside. She considers that she’s immortal, that she’s been caught up in this thing she barely believes let alone understands. And right now, she’s sharing a backseat with two restless swans and the Greylag who’s settled against her side demanding affection. It’s all too much, too overwhelming. She aches for Tigris. She hasn’t seen her goose in more than half a year, since her last leave before deployment. She wonders what he’s up to back in Chicago with her mom. Does he know she died? Does he know she came back to life? She supposes she’s not a marine anymore. Does that mean they can be reunited?

Eventually, the soft breathing of the goose in her lap quiets all of the anxieties and uncertainties in her mind and lulls her to sleep.

_They were supposed to wait. They were supposed to take him. Not Joe. Not Nicky._

He had called Copley on his drive from Gibraltar. Copley had said that the video from Sudan wasn’t enough, that the samples were contaminated.

“Take me,” he’d replied. “So long as Amelie comes with me.” He thought they’d agreed. _Clearly they hadn’t._

His knuckles are white against the steering wheel. He wants to punch something. He glances over his shoulder looking for Amelie and has to do a double take so he doesn’t run the car off the road.

Amelie -- who has never once voluntarily touched another human being, who hates even Maryam and Margherita’s fussing -- is asleep, asleep with her head in Nile’s lap.

But Nile doesn’t have a soulmate goose.

Add it to the growing list of shitty things he doesn’t understand.

Nile’s spent all day in an abandoned mine with an honest-to-god Rodin, two very unhappy swans, a goose who keeps circling her curiously, and two tense immortals she barely knows.

When Andy announces she’s headed out, it’s a relief. One less stressed out, snippy entity to deal with.

She doesn’t know why she does it. Maybe because she still doesn’t fully believe that she can’t die, that she heals in an instant. Maybe because the fire is mesmerizing and looks almost soft. Maybe because she’s bored out of her mind and seeing who can stick their hand in the fire for the longest is absolutely the kind of childish bullshit she and her brother would do to waste time.

So she sticks her hand in the fire. Amelie lets out a honk and comes running over, wings flapping. Startled by the goose and the hot ouch fuck burn hot shit fuck, she pulls her hand back with a hiss of pain. And then she watches the burns, which would previously have incapacitated her for days, heal in a matter of moments. Amelie nips at her knee once and then turns and walks away.

“Just because we keep living doesn’t mean we stop hurting.”

His voice is ragged, almost hoarse. Her eyes flick up. His expression looks wrecked. She’s known him for just a handful of hours, but there’s something about him that’s different than the others.

She lets slip the question that’s been rattling around her brain since dinner with Nicky and Joe last night. “Why us?”

Booker releases a bitter laugh and reaches for his flask. “That way madness lies.”

“I thought you were the brains of this outfit.” She doesn’t know what in the world possesses her to say it, but she can’t help but smirk a little bit as the man across from her laughs. Amelie yips and bonks her head into the side of his leg. His laugh is still undercut with something dark and hurting, but he laughs and the sides of his eyes crinkle a little bit and _maybe he’s kind of okay after all._

“I’ll tell you what I do wonder: is why you and why now.”

Nile doesn’t have an answer for that, or a witty retort. His gaze on her feels heavy somehow but she finds that she likes it, that she doesn’t want him to return to the screen he’s been focused on all day. She changes tack: “How old is Andy?”

He doesn’t know. Which, fine. At least he’s honest with her. And then he says, “What about you, you have someone?” and her world tilts ever so slightly. _Is he the world’s worst flirt?_ She glances at Amelie settled next to his booted foot and feels a pang of longing for Tigris, for the easy comfort, the wholeness of being with her goose. She… can’t. Not yet. Tigris is still _hers_ for at least a little longer. “Just my family.”

She sees a whole manner of emotions flicker across his face in the pause that follows, like there’s something on the verge of spilling out, something important, something precious. She doesn’t understand what he’s trying to tell her at first, and then the weight of it hits her. That he had a family that he went back to after his first death, that it ended in the destruction of his heart. She sees his flask, the haunting in his eyes with new understanding. She knows what he’s telling her, to let her mom and brother think she’s really gone forever, even though she will roam the earth long after they’re the ones who are laid to rest. And she doesn’t know -- anything really -- but she _hears_ him, hears his pain and his regrets. She’s entranced by his honesty, his sincerity, and maybe a little charmed by the way that his goose has laid her head in his lap.

Then, there’s a sound outside. Her hackles rise and her vision jerks towards the entrance of the old mine.

“Did you hear that?” she asks. He nods. She gets up and says, “I’ll go.”

Nile picks up a sidearm laying on a crate by the entrance, checks the chamber, and slowly edges towards the entrance.

She hears the sound again and it sounds like… _a honk?_

_No way._

Her heart beats a little bit faster at the possibility.

She pushes through the brush and she sees him standing there. “Tigris,” she calls and falls to her knees on the rough ground. Her goose -- her goose! -- runs over and flaps his wings happily. He looks a little worse for wear. There are some feathers out of place and he looks a little run down, skinnier than usual. “How did--” and then she realizes, she knows. “You flew all the way from Chicago, didn’t you?” He bobs his head and then she’s throwing her arms around him and feeling his neck curve over her shoulder.

She feels whole again, feels like herself. Whatever shitshow she’s gotten herself into with Andy and this whole immortality thing, at least now she’s got her goose by her side.

When Nile returns, he notes first the easy way the pistol hangs from her hand -- whatever it was wasn’t a threat -- and then his eyes snag on the form by her side. A goose.

Nile has a soulmate goose.

_Maybe?_

_No._

_But, surely...?_

_Stop it._ He cannot allow himself to hope and yet he starts trying to do the math. Is she old enough to be the one? Surely the world wouldn’t be so cruel? No, it would be exactly that cruel.

Nile sits back down across the fire from him. He turns back to his computer and pretends to be looking at whatever’s on the screen. Out of the corner of her eye, he sees Maryam and Margherita come over and sniff at Nile’s big Canada goose. There are small yips of approval on all parts. Then Maryam and Margherita settle down next to each other, heads up and swiveling between him and Nile on opposite sides of the fire.

Amelie nips at him to get his attention. He looks down at her with his eyebrows raised. She rustles her feathers a bit, preening, showing off, and then walks around the fire to where Nile’s goose has settled at her side. He watches Amelie walk back and forth in front of Nile’s goose and then shake her white tail feathers in happiness while holding her head up high. She lets out a rare honk. He risks a glance over at Nile. She’s also watching their geese, but almost as if she feels his eyes on her, she flicks her gaze up at him. They look at each other for an instant, questions, confusion, uncertainty, hope, before he can’t bear it and he tears his eyes away from her. Amelie has settled down right next to the other goose, rubbing her head against his neck.

And then Nile’s goose stands up and honks, really honks, and shakes his tail feathers and then lays down next to her and starts nibbling at the feathers on Amelie’s back, preening and grooming her.

_No no no no no. Not now. Not fucking now._

He locks eyes with Nile, sees the questions, the wonder there, and it’s just all so…

“I need some fresh air.” He rushes towards the entrance of the cave like the coward he is. An absolute cacophony explodes behind him, two geese and two swans barking at his back. Somehow amidst the clamor at his departure, he hears Nile say, “Tigris, it’s okay.” He feels a zing of _something_ run through him at that. The goose’s name is Tigris. Of course it is.

He shivers when he emerges from the overgrowth, either from the cool of the night or whatever had just happened. He kicks at the loose gravel and goes to stand at the edge of the quarry. He picks up a couple of stones from the ground and one by one chucks them as far as he can. He watches them arc through the air and fall, fall, fall, inevitably, into the still water below.

He feels like he is indeed standing on the edge of the abyss. He hasn’t heard from Copley, but it’s only a matter of time. Coordinates and a time and instructions. Ever increasing demands. And now this -- whatever this is with Nile. _Fuck_.

He unscrews the cap of his flask and takes a good, long pull. There’s a sharp pain at the back of his knee and he twists around in equal parts pain and irritation. It’s Amelie, head high and looking at him with what he swears is such judgement. Booker sinks onto the ground, onto his back, spreads his arms out wide. Amelie nips at the hand still holding the flask. He doesn’t let go. He hears her huff but then feels her settle in the space between his torso and his arm, laying her long neck across Booker’s chest. It feels nice. Cuddling with Amelie always does. He lies there, idly stroking at her feathers, feeling her breath across his skin and his mind drifts back to what’s happening inside the cave. To Nile and her big, brassy Canada goose, named after a river just like her. He thinks back to Amelie sleeping with her head in Nile’s lap. He thinks about Nile’s eyes glowing in the firelight, her soft teasing, and slight smile. He thinks back to watching his goose settle down next to Tigris.

Earlier that evening he had wondered aloud _why you and why now?_ The question rattles around his head now, taunting him with answers he can’t bear to consider.

Nile supposes that she should heed Andy’s words -- _get some sleep while you can_ \-- but her body feels twitchy. Tigris has settled himself fully on top of her legs. God he’s heavy, but it’s nice too. The weight of him leaning against her. His head nuzzling into her.

The thought pops into her head that the sad, sincere tank of a man would also feel nice against her and she banishes it as quickly as it comes. She’s had enough Big Life Changes in the last two days to last her years, and yet now another one has come knocking.

Booker might be 200 years old, might have died fighting for Napoleon, but she feels like he understands her, understands what she’s going through. He has been nothing but achingly honest and kind and caring.

And from their first moments together, his goose had sought out her touch and affection.

Nile hugs Tigris close -- they’re rarely this touchy, but she’s been away from so long and it feels so nice -- and thinks back to what Booker said earlier, about the only way being forward. _Is it?_

Nile startles awake from her goose squirming in her lap. “Tigris,” she mutters and tries to bury her face into his back once again. She hadn’t realized she’d dozed off, but now she wants to keep sleeping, thank you very much. Tigris, of course, doesn’t listen and fusses till he finds the right leverage to push himself off of her. She murmurs, “Fine,” and maybe it’s a little bit of a whine. Nevertheless, she watches Tigris move away from her, sleepily, until he stops before a man’s boots. _Boots? Shit shit shit Freeman_ and she flails about feeling for where she might’ve stashed a sidearm so she can protect herself. Why had she gotten so--

“Nile.” The deep, familiar timbre of his voice cuts through her panic. _Booker. It’s just Booker._

She has a hand over her heart and she’s breathing heavily but she catches his eye. She finds there are emotions on his face that she can’t quite read, but boy does this man seem to _feel_. She scans him from head to toe and back and nothing seems to be wrong with him. Good. That’s good. She notices for the first time how tall he is, how broad. She can almost imagine the scratch of his beard against her cheek and… _Nile, stop it._

Then she sees him wince in pain and they both look down at Tigris who has clearly bitten Booker’s wrist, the one that’s holding the flask.

“Not you, too,” he mutters.

Nile can’t help but grin in spite of herself. Apparently, the drinking is a thing with him. And, okayyyy, she doesn’t know how she feels about _that_ , but at least Tigris is trying to do something? Tigris is nothing if not persistent, so he keeps circling Booker and biting at his thigh and his wrist. Booker begins to walk back towards where his laptop is sitting and Tigris follows, honking at him, but not hissing. Booker is murmuring to himself, words that might be in French, as paces back and forth around the cave, trying to shake his Canada goose shaped harassment.

Finally, Booker stops and slowly turns to face Tigris. He looks down at the goose and slowly lowers the flask all the way to the ground. Then, with a kick he sends it skittering across the floor of the cave till it lodges underneath one of the heaps of rocks at the edge.

“Satisfied?” he asks.

Tigris honks twice and shakes his tail feathers in agreement. Nile is absolutely grinning, but hiding it behind her hand. Something about seeing her goose care about this man in his own obnoxious Canada goose way just… it makes her happier than she can remember being in a long, long time. Weird.

Then Tigris bites at Booker's thigh once more and he says, “Oww, what was that for?” Nile has to duck her head between her knees, to hide how hard she’s laughing.

When she finally catches her breath, she raises her head to find Booker’s heavy, comfortable gaze on her. “What?” he says.

“Tigris like you.”

“That was affection?”

Nile hums in response, raises her eyebrows slightly. He huffs, but Nile thinks the irritation is mostly for show.

Then, he glances to the side and Nile’s eyes follow. Their geese are sitting with their heads together.

“I feel like they’re planning something,” he says slowly. “Don’t you?”

Before Nile can respond, goose honks and barks flood the cave, bouncing off the hard stone walls. Amelie spreads her wings and flaps them and charges towards Nile. She throws her hands up in surrender and she starts moving backwards in the direction Amelie wants her to go. In her periphery, she notices that Booker is receiving the same treatment from Tigris.

They end up back to back, pinned by their geese circling around them, honking and nipping if they so much as try to step away.

Booker tries reasoning with them. “Just let me get my computer and I’ll come right back. You can walk over there with me. I promise I’m not running away.” Nile cranes her neck around to see two very unimpressed geese looking back at him. She tries not to smile because the tilt of their heads is identical and she thinks that Tigris and Amelie make a nice pair. And then she just barely restrains herself from smacking her palm against her forehead because _now is not the time._

She feels Booker take two steps away from her and the squawking starts up again and she feels him move back into her space with a sigh.

That’s when she notices Maryam and Margherita nudging at something oblong and canvas wrapped, trying to roll it in their direction.

“Booker,” she says, slowly, “I think the birds have unionized against us. Look.” She senses him turn and she feels his head just above her left shoulder. She points in the direction of the swans.

“I can not believe--” he huffs.

“You’ve been awake for what? Almost 24 hours?” She turns to face him as she asks, and she can tell he’s irritated, but his gaze still falls on her and she feels it thick and bodily, as she always does. “Maybe we should both get some sleep.”

He looks at her for a moment more, scanning her face, searching for something. What, she doesn’t know. Then he brushes past her and walks over to pick up the canvas sack. None of the birds object.

There is indeed a bedroll inside the sack and Nile’s certain it hasn’t been used in maybe half a century, based on the smell. They spread out the blankets together. It’s not much, but it beats sleeping on the ground, and she’s able to roll up a spare blanket to use as a pillow, which feels almost luxurious.

She lies on her back for a moment, staring up at the roof of the cave, the thick timbers supporting the rock overhead. Today was… a lot. She starts to poke at the memories in her mind and then tells herself to stop. If she starts, she’ll be awake for hours yet. Instead, she pushes everything that’s happened in the last two days, and especially since Booker and his kindness and sincerity and his snuggly Greylag goose rolled into her life, to the back of her brain and slams the door on it. Some other time.

She feels Tigris settle next to her and push his head against her cheek. She runs her fingers through the feathers at his side, scratches at that spot at the base of his wing she knows he loves. He chortles against her. “Glad to have you back,” she says to him, softly and she knows he feels the same.

Nile turns onto her side, pulling Tigris against her chest, and drifts slowly off to sleep.

When Andy returns to the cave in the wee hours of the morning, the first thing she notices is that the fire has burned down to embers. Then she spies two figures stretched out on some blankets, breathing softly. Good for them.

Something, though, gives her pause. Something new, that wasn’t here before. The swans are curled up with each other, as expected. She takes a couple steps closer to Nile and Booker. In the gloom of the cave it takes a moment for her to parse what she’s seeing.

Nile and Booker sleeping on their sides, facing each other and two geese between them, with their heads tucked under their wings. _Wait, two?_ Of course Nile would have a fucking soulmate goose, too.

Andy scrubs her hand over face. A torment of emotions twist in her gut.

She needs to hit something. She needs to leave. She needs to hurt something. She needs to…

She takes one last look at them and her eyes fall on their hands, not quite joined, the edge of his hand just barely resting on top of hers, his pinkie twined around her ring finger, innocent and unconscious. Even in sleep, drawn to one another.

 _Fuck_ , she thinks. It’s not just that Nile has a soulmate goose.

_Booker and Nile are soulmates._

Andy turns on her heel, kicks at a wooden chest. Pain blooms in her toe and doesn’t fade.

She’ll sleep in the backseat of the car.


	3. The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to the folks on tumblr who've theorized that Shakespeare's fair youth sonnets were written about Nicky, much to Joe's chagrin. It's a head canon that delights me and it makes a cameo in this chapter.
> 
> This is no longer the last chapter. The next one will be, though. *grins and winks*

Booker wakes up warm along his front and cold across his back. He spits a stray feather out of his mouth, and cracks open his eyes. Amelie is pushed up against his chest, but so is Tigris, both with their heads tucked under their wing, a not-quite matched set.

His stomach flips and he rolls onto his back and presses his palms into his eyes. _What in the actual fuck is he going to do?_

He creeps over to his laptop and finds an encrypted message from Copley. At the very least, it’s the first step to getting Joe and Nicky back. Maybe he can figure something out on the drive to England.

He ducks through the underbrush at the opening to the mine. As he emerges, he calls, “Guys I found something. An address. Just outside of London.”

Andy and Nile, both leaning on the hood of the car, glance up at him. Then Nile looks back down at the phone clutched in her hands.

Andy stands. “We’ve gotta go.” She stretches out her hand. Nile hands the phone over without looking at it or at Andy.

He can tell something’s not right, but before he can go to her, pull Nile into his embrace, Andy’s barking orders about clothing and weaponry. And then four geese and three people are packing into the old sedan and they’re speeding north in the early morning light.

Nile’s in the backseat again, but this time Andy’s driving, and Nile’s got a lap full of her very own goose.

They’re going to get Joe and Nicky _whatever it takes_. Nile’s not sure how she feels about that. She woke up this morning with her hand in Booker’s, her goose curled alongside his. Nile’s not sure how she feels about that either.

Yesterday, he’d said that the only way is forward. But he doesn’t know her mom or her brother, doesn’t know how hard they’ve already had to fight for each other, especially since her dad died. They could never hate her, right? At least she’d get to say goodbye.

The car pulls up outside a tiny stone cottage tucked back in a thick grove of ancient looking trees.

“The Juliet safehouse,” says Andy. “We’ll leave the geese here for safety.”

They all pile out of the car and the geese and swans follow without any fuss as they walk up to the house.

As she’s waiting for Andy to pick the lock on the front door, Nile wonders aloud. “How do you name these safehouses? This one is clearly older than the Charlie safehouse, but J is later in the NATO alphabet.”

“Andy names them after people the team knew,” replies Booker. “Charlie was for Charles DuGaul. Fitting because they named the airport after him too.”

“And Juliet?”

“An inside joke.”

“Joe and Nicky had a run in with Shakespeare,” adds Andy. “Will was -- uh -- quite enamoured of Nicky. Joe thought we should name this house after the eponymous star-crossed lover in honor of the incident.”

“Nicky hates it. Calls it the Julia safehouse, instead.”

“Julia?”

“For Julia Child. Nicky owes all of his French cooking prowess to her. Trust me.”

Nile grins and snorts at him and Andy pushes the door open.

Once inside, the swans make a bee-line for the bed shoved in the corner of the cottage’s main room. They settle next to each other, as always, but shoot Andy their most irritated looks. Amelie hops up on the ragged and moth-eaten couch and Tigris follows her. Nile meets her goose at the couch, petting a hand down his neck in farewell. She glances over to Booker next to her doing the same with Amelie. His eyes meet hers and it’s the first time she’s looked at him, really looked at him, since she gasped awake from the feeling of a knife slashing at her throat, and studied his peacefully sleeping face while trying to get her breathing under control. They look at each other now for a long moment. He opens his mouth to say something and she pulls her eyes away, back to Tigris.

Then Andy taps her foot impatiently. “Can we go now?”

“Coming, boss,” he says and heads to join her at the door.

Nile hates to leave her goose so soon after being reunited, but needs must. She strokes down his neck one more time and then follows the other two out of the little cottage.

As the car rolls towards Surrey, their words over the last couple of days bash together in her head, hitting into the picture of her mom and her brother on her phone this morning. _Was the only way forward? Was she ready to do whatever it takes to get Joe and Nicky back? And Booker… shit, how do you even begin to think about_ that _?_

Booker pulls the sedan into a copse of trees at the back of Copley’s property, just as the satellite imagery promised. He cuts the engine and steals a quick glance at Nile, riding shotgun. As long as they’re together. It’s shit, but that’s the best he can do.

Then, he steps out of the car and heads around to the trunk where he checks and hands Andy an empty pistol. She takes it without question, tucks it into the waistband of her jeans. He wants to be vomit, to be sick. He’s about to shatter whatever tenuous trust they might still share and he hates that this is what it has come to but knows no other option than to keep going and hope that he makes it out the other side. That they all make it out the other side.

Booker checks his own pistol. Andy tells him to “Go scout the back” and he turns towards the opening in the trees and, with one last glance at Nile, begins to jog away.

He’s just rounded out of sight of the car, not yet in sight of the house, when Nile’s voice stops him in his tracks.

“I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I mean I’m _not_ doing this.”

_What? No._

He listens with the pistol gripped in both hands, his feet frozen to their spot. He feels his heart pulled from his chest as she describes grappling with the guilt of her first kill. He wants to return around the trees, take her in his arms, tell her it’s all going to be okay. But he doesn’t. Because it’s not all going to be okay, and they are all too far down this path to turn back now, as much as he might wish it.

When she brings up the why, why do they do what they do, he hears her _why us_ from the night before and, despite everything, can’t help but smile. God, she’s smart and tenacious and…

And then she says, “My family. They’re gonna get old and I won’t. But it’ll be years before they realize that. I still have time with them.”

He feels like he can’t breath, like the air has suddenly turned to toxin. Because he knows she’s making a mistake. Because he knows it will end in heartbreak for her, like it did for him. Because he never wants to see her suffer ever, ever again.

And because she’s leaving, leaving him, her soulmate, behind.

He’s alone. Again.

_Here goes absolutely nothing._

Nile pulls off the road alongside one of the many, many fields in this bucolic part of England. She pops the trunk and starts tossing weapons into the duffel, Booker’s duffel. She ejects the clip of one of the sidearms, the habit ingrained, even if she would now certainly survive a stray bullet, and starts to toss it too in the duffel, when he realizes _it’s empty_. She looks between the pistol and clip and recalls that this was the gun Booker handed to Andy.

It doesn’t make sense. There’s no reason to hand Andy a useless weapon before a fight… unless…

_Oh Book, what have you done?_

Instead of ditching the car and the weapons, Nile’s next stop is the little cottage in the woods. If she’s doing this, she needs back up, even if that consists of four very worked up geese.

Nile can hear them as she pulls up outside the building. Thank god they are truly out in the middle of nowhere because the geese and swans are loud as fuck.

There’s something that keeps her from jumping out of the car and immediately running to the birds inside. So much has happened to her in the last few days and she’s alone, truly alone for the first time since Andy smuggled her out of a US military base in Afghanistan. So she takes a deep, deep breath and she sits and she thinks. She thinks of her mom and brother in Chicago, how much she misses them, how much she loves them. She thinks of Andy, the ancient warrior with her long lost soulmate, her cynicism and tenacity. She thinks of Joe and Nicky and their palpable their love for one another. She thinks of how kind and gentle they were in introducing her to this new existence.

And she thinks of Booker, the man who is meant to be her soulmate. She can barely think that word, it seems still so unreal, so impossible, and yet the bond between Tigris and Amelie is clear. Booker is her soulmate. He is also a man who is drowning in grief and loathing, in alcohol. And, he is a man, she is almost certain, who has betrayed the closest thing he now has to family.

She barely knows them -- Joe and Nicky and Andy and Booker -- and can barely imagine what her life with them will be like. Yet each of them has treated her with kindness, unconditionally, from the first moment she met them.

Unconditional love through thick and thin. _That’s what family really is, right?_

The geese continue to honk at each other, all four of them. That’s when the thought hits her.

_Wait, Tigris is here. That means… that means Mama thinks my goose disappeared, that Mama already thinks that I am dead, that I’ve been killed in action._

With that, she jumps out of the car, her course decided on.

She hasn’t yet learned how to pick locks, so she jimmies open one of the windows like she used to do when she and her brother would visit their upstairs neighbors in the summer by the fire escape instead of the stairs. When she drops down onto the packed earth floor, all four heads swivel to look at her and a hush falls over the room.

Then Amelie is hissing and rushing at her with her head down and Tigris is following after her honking and biting at Amelie’s side. Nile presses herself back against the wall of the cottage and says, “We both fucked up, okay?”

Amelie bites at her thigh once, twice. Nile takes it, because yeah, she sees now that she should have talked to him, about them and the future and, well, everything, that she shouldn’t have left without seeing him, saying it to his face. But then, she croaks out, “Please,” and it sounds ragged to her own ears. She sinks to her knees and says, “I need your help.” Amelie quiets, looks at her, bobs her head. Tigris joins in. Nile sees Maryam and Margherita look at each other and then look back to her.

“Great,” Nile says. “Let’s go get them all back.”

Copley glances up and sees a woman with a halo of geese around her and a gun pointed at him. He thinks she might be an avenging angel before realizing this is another one, _another one_ , and the geese are those he’s seen in the drawings and photographs on his wall.

Sometime later, Keane watches the security camera feed as a woman who _definitely_ shouldn’t be on that floor, and definitely shouldn’t have _multiple_ geese with her, gets shot twice in the chest only to rise again and take out three of his men.

Nile and her gaggle of geese aren’t exactly stealthy, but that was never the goal. They’re loud and flashy and distracting. After years and years of being conditioned to respect soulmate geese, to never touch someone’s goose, Merrick’s men have no idea how to shoot at one woman when she’s got a crowd of geese all around her.

Nile opens the door to the lab and Maryam and Margherita fly off at first sight of their humans, with great loud honks. They are met by delighted noises from Nicky and Joe, relief and appreciation.

Booker says, “Nile?” and then shouts, “Behind you” and Nile feels the bullet in the back of her thigh as she fires off two shots to get her assailant off their tail, if only for a moment. She has no idea if she hits him, doesn’t actually care. She knocks out some chick in a white coat. She places a pistol in Andy’s hand. They take out the four shooters at the door. Then she turns to Booker. She unclasps the restraint around his wrist.

“Just leave me here,” he says, and her heart breaks a little at that, but _now is not the time, Freeman._

She snaps, “No man left behind,” because they’re the closest words she has to what she wants to say to him right now, even if they’re not quite right.

Andy is quelling Joe’s ire. Nicky stands, pulls on a shirt. And then, suddenly, they’re all dressed and armed and ready and standing at the door, their geese right by their sides. She glances at Booker and sees the concentration on his face, feels like she can sense how they’re going to work and fight together, even though they’ve never done so before.

Andy says, “Let’s go get this motherfucker,” and they do.

When Nile takes a bullet meant for Andy and throws herself at Merrick and out the busted window, she senses rather than sees Tigris diving after her.

For a moment there is only oblivion and then pain. Then, a pop. Fire. Hurt. Fuck. Ouch. Pop. Hurt. Pop. Shit. Fuck.

Vaguely she hears voices, men’s voices, low and safe. Far away. Pain too overwhelming.

And then, with another couple of cracks and pops, most of the pain is gone, her spine’s back in its column, her joints bend in the appropriate directions. Her hands and feet still hurt like hell, curling and snapping back into place, but she recognizes the opening in the side of the car and begins to move in that direction, begins to sit up.

“Give me your hand.” Booker says it so tenderly, like he’s asking her for an old-timey dance, not to help her out of a car smashed in by the weight of her own falling body.

She’s still moving slowly, gingerly, but she looks at him, and obeys, fits her hand into his open one. He tugs, gently lifts, pulls her out of the wreckage with her arm around his shoulder. The moment she’s free, he pulls her tight against him, wraps his arms around her back, holds her close. She feels his beard tickle where he’s buried his face in her neck.

“You came back,” he says, a whisper, awe and gratitude.

She wraps her arms around his shoulders, holds his big solid body against hers. “I did,” she breathes, a confirmation and a promise.

It’s a honk that breaks them apart. Margherita is standing on the roof of the car just in front of the one Nile fell into, looking impatient. They do need to get a move on.

Nile grabs Andy’s labrys from the car, returns it to her. Nile feels Andy’s hand cup the back of her head, thanks and pride in the quirk of her lips.

They all pile into the sedan, with Nile and Booker and Nicky and their geese smushed together in the backseat. Nile ducks her head into Booker’s shoulder, closes her eyes. “We need a fucking minivan,” she murmurs, to herself more than anything and she feels Booker’s chest vibrate with contained mirth. Her fingers stroke along the feathers of Tigris’ back. This feels nice. This feels good.

As they drive on, winding through London, and then speeding out to the country, Nile can sense the adrenaline draining from her. There’s so much still to talk about but she feels her eyelids drooping, exhaustion overtaking her. She feels Booker’s arm move around her shoulders. Her last thought before sleep overtakes her is that his chest makes an awfully nice pillow.

Andy pulls the car to a stop outside the Juliet safehouse and turns in her seat to survey the rest of them.

“Save the talking for tomorrow, at the Prospect of Whitby. Tonight, we clean up, we eat, and we rest.”

None of them really say anything at all that evening. They shower and they eat. They lay a couple of pallets on the floor and pull some blankets out of a cupboard. Booker finds himself on the end, next to Nile. She sprawls out on her stomach, but just before she settles in, she glances over at him and pulls his hand into hers, twists her fingers in between his.

Booker isn’t one for metaphors outside of literature: life is hardly so neat and accommodating. But this one -- on the outs, but still connected -- feels like a harbinger.

Joe throws his hand up in frustration and Nile turns to look out the window to where Booker is leaning on the railing and drinking whiskey from a cut crystal glass instead of a flask.

The punishments they’re tossing about -- fifty years, a hundred years, two hundred years -- all of them are unfathomably long to her.

She gets that the other three are hurt, sees it in their eyes, hears it in the cut of their words. But she can’t take it any more.

She walks outside, with Tigris following her. Booker turns almost immediately, glancing over his shoulder.

“How’s it going?” he says.

She settles against the railing next to him. Tigris settles next to Amelie at their feet. “They’re still deciding.”

“There’s not much to decide. It’s not like they can kill me.” She watches him pull the glass to his lips and take a sip, watches his throat swallow the whiskey down. She can’t stand this either, the ease and familiarity with which he wears his world-weariness. But what is she to say to a man who has been alone for a long, long time? She glances down at their geese, at the proof of their connection to each other, and lets out a sigh because there are no good answers.

She leans back against the railing, pulls the phone from her pocket and flips it around in her fingers, a long established nervous habit.

“She gave it back?”

Nile glances at him, then down at her phone, the lock screen still dark.

“Yeah. Tigris was staying with my mom--” She feels his gaze on her, steady and secure. He ducks his head, a nod of understanding, of what is unsaid. “Copley’s gonna make it look official. My family will mourn but I-- they’ll be able to move on.” The words are viscous in her throat. She breathes in and then they unstick on her exhale. “It’s just like what we did when my dad died.” Nile slides her phone back in her pocket, turns so her elbows are resting on the railing. She feels Booker at her side. She can’t look at him, not now, but she feels almost compelled to say the thing that’s been lurking behind all of her thoughts last night and this morning. “I just really want to hear my mom’s voice one more time.”

“Nile,” he says, her name low and tender. She turns to look at him and she feels his eyes raking across her face, a spark hoving in the air between them. “You are the bravest person I know.”

He’s standing down on the stony bank of the Thames, tossing pebbles and staring at the slow current of the water, when Andy joins him.

“There’s got to be a price.”

He nods. Of course. God, if Nile hadn’t saved them all, he can’t even imagine what it would have been like, locked in that room for days, months, years. To be parted from Amelie. To be parted from Nile.

He didn’t mean for it to happen, not like that, anyways. But he’s known for a long time now that intention and result are different beasts. He didn’t mean to make his sons hate him, but that was the result. He didn’t mean to make Andy loathe him and his goose, but that was the result.

“A hundred years from today, they’ll meet you here. Till then, you’re alone.”

He glances at her, swallows thickly.

It will be immeasurably painful, knowing not just that there is some person out there in some vague way, but knowing that his soulmate, that fierce, curious, brave Nile is biding the time till his punishment is up. It was 26 years waiting for Nile. Now he will wait a 100 more.

“I hoped for less. But I expected more.”

“Nile was going to let you off with an apology.”

At Andy’s words, pain and pleasure zing through his gut. Nile didn’t want this. Nile wanted him to stay, to grovel and apologize, but to stay. But hers was just one voice, no doubt drowned in the noise of Nicky and Joe’s joined pain and fury.

And then the thought strikes him that this is punishment in another way. Despite all of the dirty looks and snide remarks he’s endured from Andy since Amelie hatched, he spent so many years as her friend and her de facto partner. Now that’s over.

As if thinking the same thing she says, “I’m gonna miss you.”

His voice almost breaks when he replies, “I’m not going to see you again.” They turn into each other, and he feels Andy’s hand at the back of his head, her brusque affection one last time.

“Have a little faith, Book.” He’s reeling as she turns and walks away.

As they head up the stairs, only Joe looks back.

Then all hell breaks loose.

Tigris flaps his wings and springs into flight, honking again and again. Simultaneously, Amelies runs up from where she’s been wading in the shallows of the river, her head down and wings spread, belting as loudly as he’s ever heard his quiet little goose. Tigris circles around him and then lands at his back and joins his own goose in her flapping and honking. Amelie nips at his ankles. He glances towards the stairs and notes that all four of them have paused, have turned to watch.

“Okay okay,” he says and starts walking in the direction the geese are herding him, towards the other members of his immortal family. But he is apparently not fast enough, because he feels a literal pain in the ass and turns to see Tigris honking and smirking at him.

“I’m sorry,” he calls out to the others as he nears them. “I don’t…”

Nile pushes past Andy and Joe on the stairs and trots towards him, towards her goose.

“Tigris,” she says. Tigris falls silent and skips over to her across the stony beach. He butts his head into her thigh.

Amelie bites once more at Booker’s ankle and he keeps walking, walking towards Nile. He glances up at Nicky and Joe and Andy, who are all staring. Riveted. Uncertain.

Nile bends down and wraps her arms around her goose. “Let’s try this again,” she says, and stands, squeezing her goose to her chest.

Booker stills as he watches Nile turn back to the others with her arms full of goose. She takes one step, then another. Reaches the stairs. Puts her foot on the first tread.

“OW. Fuck,” she shouts. Tigris falls to the ground in a whirl of feathers. He honks once and then nips at Nile’s ankles, till she starts moving away from Joe and Nicky and Andy, back across the beach, back towards him.

She stops about an arm’s length away from him.

“Tigris bit you?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says, rubbing at her cheek. “He did.”

He glances over his shoulder, sees Amelie standing guard behind him. He runs a hand through his hair.

She’s looking at him, and he feels all of her attention like heat across his cheeks. And then he feels the heat of her eyes move down, across his chest and torso, his legs, down to his boots, and then slowly, agonizingly back up. She has her bottom lip worried between her teeth and there’s uncertainty in her expression that he’s never seen before.

She glances over her shoulder, to where Tigris is guarding her back, just like Amelie is his, to where Andy and Joe and Nicky are still on the steps, still watching them. She doesn’t say anything, just turns to face the others and shrugs her shoulders.

Andy looks at them both. After a long moment she says, “This is really happening, huh?”

Nicky lays a hand on her shoulder. “Let us give them a moment. We all have lots to discuss.”

“I need a beer,” mutters Andy, her voice still carrying down to the beach. Joe barks a laugh. They turn and head back into the Prospect of Whitby, with Maryam and Margherita a matched set at their heels.

Nile watches them leave, then turns back to face Booker. She extends her hand towards him, palm up, inviting. He steps closer and takes it, twining their hands together. He looks down at her perfect fingers against the back of his hand, a hand that has brought so much pain and suffering and death into the world, and says the first thing that comes to his mind.

“I don’t deserve you.”

Nile ducks her head, looks at their hands, lets out almost a laugh. She tilts her head to the side as her eyes return to his face. She’s got almost a grin on her face, like the one that glowed in the firelight two nights ago.

“Clearly our geese think that you do.”

He glances to his right, sees Amelie and Tigris standing next to each other looking at them both with gimlet eyes. He can’t help but huff a little bit of a laugh too.

He feels her hand whisper on his face an instant before her mouth presses up against his. Almost as soon as it begins, she is pulling back, dropping her forehead to his chest. He feels fireworks explode in his abdomen, tingles on his lips, in his fingers and toes.

“Nile,” he breathes and his chest burns with a sharp, sweet longing like he’s never felt before, for her touch, for her kiss. For her.

“Booker.” She is equally breathless, equally burning. His eyes rake over her face with heat and with want. As he slowly lowers his face towards her, she nods once and he crushes his mouth against hers.

They move together perfectly, like they have done this countless times before, like they are meant for each other. She opens her mouth to him and he runs his tongue over hers. His hands rush down her sides and up her back. She pushes herself against him, cups his face with both of her hands. He pours everything, _everything_ he’s ever felt for her into the kiss and she takes it and holds it precious and gives it back to him all shiny and sparking and more beautiful than ever before.

As they stand there on the banks of the Thames in each other’s embrace, more at home than they’ve ever been anywhere else in their lives, a Greylag and a Canada goose whirl around each other in the air overhead, honking and flapping in perfect harmony.


End file.
